


Big Fake

by mediocre_kazoo_player



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: General warning for canon-typical nasty stuff but with more dicks, M/M, Pre-Game Personalities (New Dangan Ronpa V3), Slight Internalized Homophobia, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-04-28 22:26:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14459103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mediocre_kazoo_player/pseuds/mediocre_kazoo_player
Summary: There are some sick fucks out there who get a little turned on by Danganronpa executions. Ouma won't admit it, but he's one of those people.Saihara isn't.Saihara gets unapologetic raging hard-ons.Some fantasies should stay fantasies.





	1. But that's wrong

Ouma Kokichi might be incapable of walking with his back hunched at anything less than a hundred twenty degree angle. Ambling down this street under the weight of a backpack two jostles away from splitting open at its flimsy seams, he looks like some kind of giant turtle. A really sad one with wispy stick limbs.

He's here to visit someone. DRFanShuu or whoever. Fuck if he remembers, it's only been two days since they first met. He already likes the guy—get this, Shuu-chan lives on a street that doesn't bear the ubiquitous stench of puddles that could be acid rain or hobo piss depending on your mood that day. Heh. Lowers the chance of him waking up in a sewer somewhere with one kidney and a sore asshole.

He wonders what Shuu-chan looks like. Probably spits when he talks. Big overbite, maybe. Traces of a five o' clock shadow, spokes of sparse black hair that he yanks out of his face with charred yellow fingernails every now and then. Translucent teeth. They get uglier the more deranged they seem on the forum, and if Shuu-chan's posts are anything to go by, well...

Whatever. All he's going to do is pay the poor bastard company for a week or two, pretend he's made his first friend, and then get lost as soon as he's bored again. Easy squeezy lemon peasy.

Ouma kicks a shriveled plastic bottle down the road. It rattles. He kicks it some more. He rattlekickwalks all the way up to Shuu-chan's front door.

Knock knock.

Oh, come on, who does this fucker think he is? If he's going to get stood up by anyone after walking this far, it sure as hell isn't going to be some Danganronpa fanboy who sleeps with a crusty Kirigiri pillowcase.

Knock knock knock knock knock.

Earth to Shuu-chan. God, is he humping that pillowcase right now? Ew.

BANG BANG BANG BANG.

"Shuuuuuuuuuu-chaaaaaaan! I'm here for our daaaaaaaate!" he wails at the second-story window. Several birds fly away.

Somebody falls down the stairs inside. "Shuu-chan, if you keep me waiting, I'll...!"

Before he can unleash his patented hell shriek, (T minus two seconds, bitch, hurry up) the door bursts open.

The young man who greets him smells like like a raincloud comprised solely of Kira ☆ Kira Mahou Shoujo perfume. "S-s-sorry to keep you waiting, Ouma-kun. Uh, come inside. Uh, you don't have to take your shoes off." Aside from that: hair that hasn't been washed for weeks, gummy strands of drool drying on his chin, mysteriously zero facial hair.

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _When I'm feeling really down, I put on my Kyouko cosplay~_

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Before that tho I shave my entire body. My precious detective-chan is smooth like a baby <3_

Scratch that. Not mysterious at all.

"Aw, Shuu-chan! Your floor's probably _super duper_ nasty anyway so I'll keep them on, thanks." Ouma slides past his host into a silent house.

"Saihara."

"Huh?"

The door shuts. "You can...call me Saihara, now that we're in real life."

"Okie-dokie, Saihara-chan."

Saihara lets out a squeaky little giggle, knocking his knees together like a schoolgirl. He's not wearing a skirt, but his baggy boxers are pretty close. Yup, those legs are shaved.

 

Meeting Saihara was a huge mistake.

Ouma only reaches that conclusion while pinned between a mattress with no bedsheets and the one and only Kyouko Kirigiri. Kirigiri's sickeningly sweet scent matches her sickeningly sweet smile. Wasn't she supposed to be the emotionless character? Ugh, Saihara...

"Ouma-kun, according to my deductions, you left the store without paying for this watch." Saihara tightens his grip on Ouma's wrists, as if he hasn't already cut off circulation to Ouma's poor purple fingertips.

"I fucking told you I stole it, dipshit," Ouma hisses. "Let me go. I said let me go, faggot."

Saihara sternly shakes his head, sending his long lavender wig swaying. "Criminals like you need to be...exposed." Ouma's wrists would cry in relief if they could at being released. So would Ouma, but Saihara's hands busy themselves doing something even worse.

As the top few buttons of his uniform pop open, Ouma finally finds the entry in his mental dictionary for "exposed". He fucking screeches at the top of his lungs.

"HEEEELP MEEEEEE—EERGHGLK—hrk—hhhhglhk—!" But he's coughing and drooling around Kirigiri's glove before he can attract any concerned neighbors.

"Oh my god, are you okay?" Who knew he'd attract a concerned Saihara instead? The crossdressing nutcase himself is flailing one hand about wildly as if his other one isn't in Ouma's mouth right know, causing the weird gagging noises.

Ouma manages to spit it out. "Are you serious right now, Saihara-chan? What does it look like?"

"Y-you seemed fine!" Saihara looks ridiculous raising both his hands up in defense, one covered in saliva. "Just, um, I'm not good at telling that, I guess. S-so you should speak up. Sorry. I'm really sorry."

Ouma is ready to call it a day, give him some half-assed forgiveness, and suggest they both go to sleep. He looks up at Saihara's face, framed by Kirigiri's purple hair, past Saihara's weirdly long eyelashes, into his panicked snot-gray eyes, and says, "You don't look half bad in that."

They both stare at each other dumbly for the thirty seconds it takes for Ouma to rationalize that life would be dull without a little exploration.

"Thanks."

"Yeah."

"You uh, wanna make out?"

"Yeah."

 

It's as much a mistake on Wednesday as it was on Tuesday. Saihara's lips taste artificially fruity. Maybe it's Kira ☆ Kira Mahou Shoujo lip balm. Do they have that product? Ouma steals another kiss as a boy on screen gets smashed into bits of gore to a familiar tune.

The camera pans over horrified faces. "Yuuta's expression breaks my heart every time," Saihara says, waiting for Ouma to agree.

"Why? The world lost two stupid assholes who couldn't lock their doors at night. Good riddance, really."

"Ouma-kun!" It's almost entertaining how shocked Saihara looks.

"Mmm, what is it, honey?" He nestles his hand in Saihara's, fingers sandwiched together.

"Do you think you could do better?"

"Duh. Those fart huffing losers don't think before they kill. I wouldn't leave a fifth of the evidence they do."

Saihara chuckles warmly, running his lips against the shell of Ouma's ear. "I think I'd be better at it too. Wanna hear some of my murder schemes?"

"Your self-insert fanfiction?"

"Cut me some slack..."

The murder schemes are pretty good. Ouma states blandly that he's impressed, and then they go back to making out in front of the season 21 Blu-Ray.

 

Thursday. Ouma chucks a lukewarm beer at Saihara, expecting him to catch it. It smacks Saihara on the arm and crash-lands on the dirty carpet. Saihara yelps.

"What the fuck," Ouma laughs.

"I'm in the zone!" Saihara complains, rubbing his injured arm, but moving to retrieve the beer nonetheless. He cracks it open, eyes still glued to the notebook in front of him. Takes a sip. "This is the fancy stuff. How?"

Ouma sways like a rocking horse, indulging in his own beer. "I got it at a discount."

"Yeah?"

"100% off."

"You stole it."

The criminal snickers.

Saihara scratches at his hairline with the clicky part of his pen, dandruff flaking off like leftover snow in the wind. "Why are you so proud of that? You'll get caught in no time."

"Except I won't." One hand on his hip, Ouma smugly leans over Saihara, alcohol tinging his breath as he speaks. "They're all too dumb to catch me in the act. If you can break the law, you live above the law, baby."

The pen scratches Saihara's upper lip. "Okay."

"Hey." Ouma sounds insulted. "What the hell are you workin' on, anyway. Gimme that."

"No, wait!"

"Is this supposed to be you? You look like a taxidermied meth addict with a hand tumor."

"I'm not an artist! Give it back!"

Ouma throws the notebook. A Saihara made of ballpoint pen pinwheels through the air. The Saihara made of people material nurses a warm beer and pouts at Ouma, his cheeks cherry red with indignation.

"You should lose the hat," Ouma grumbles.

"The hat's a charm point." Saihara is still sullen.

They shut up and drink for a moment.

"Hey, Ouma-kun."

"What."

"If you signed up for Danganronpa, what would your ultimate talent be...?" The expectant glimmer in Saihara's eyes is nothing short of disgusting. Ouma scoffs, swallows the rest of his beer, and makes the crumpled can ping off of Saihara's forehead. "Ow!"

Ouma opens another beer. "Ultimate Thief."

"You're really proud of that, huh?"

"Fuck else were you expecting?"

Saihara's eyebrows knit in concentration. He seems a bit shy. "I don't know. Y-you seem like you'd make a good...Ultimate Prankster."

"Huuuuh? What kind of lame shit-for-brains talent is that? Do I look like a clown to you?" Ouma looks like he's going to crumple another can, this time with the beer still in it.

Saihara, fearing for his carpet, waves his hands placatingly. "N-no! I don't! I mean, you don't." He pauses. "I just thought...you shouldn't pick something that obvious. Like, Danganronpa is all about _extrapolating_ your character from your real self, not making a carbon copy, so—"

Ouma shoots him the stink eye.

"—S-so! You're, uh, good at acting and stuff, right? You make the lady at the convenience store think you're an innocent little middle schooler so she gives you free stuff, so I thought that...well, um, I thought that you'd be the guy who tricks everyone else into thinking you wouldn't kill anyone, and then you do."

"Really?" Ouma tilts his head. "So I go the whole game looking like pedo bait on legs? Saihara-chan, you're not very discreet for a huge fucking perv."

"No!" Saihara squeaks. "Let me just—let me talk, okay? Stop. Interrupting. Me." He stalls as Ouma raises one hand and both eyebrows in an _okay, sheesh_ kind of gesture. " _Okay_. I think, as the Ultimate Prankster, you'd constantly fake deaths and murders. To the point where, like, nobody takes you seriously anymore. You'd be a great rival character! I mean, think of how crazy that would be, not knowing what's fake and what's real. And then, in chapter five, you actually kill someone, and nobody suspects a thing."

Ouma only speaks when Saihara folds his hands over each other on the back of his chair, indicating that he's done. "So I'm the boy who cried corpse."

"Well...yeah, but that's putting my idea really lamely," Saihara concedes.

An aluminum can twirls in a bony hand. "Your idea's kinda not lame. I bet I could pull it off."

"I told you! It fits you perfectly!"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." The can meets Saihara's desk with a smack. "What are you supposed to be in this picture, the Ultimate Undie-Sniffer?"

"Detective, actually," Saihara corrects, too eager to be talking about his game persona to react to the jab. "I'm super observant. I've been training my observation skills for ten years to prepare for my audition. They're always looking for detectives 'cuz they push the trials and stuff, right? And detectives usually get the most screen time since it's the perfect talent for the show. So I'm thinking, if I can demonstrate my deductive skills and my intricate character ideas during my audition, they'll accept me for sure.

And, like, since I've watched every episode of the show and played all of the games, I know the usual tricks people pull. So I don't think anyone could kill me without some serious effort. Aaaand I know the best ways to get away with a murder, so I'd be a pretty good murderer, too. And since we haven't had a detective murder anyone yet, I—"

"Saihara-chan, the unreliable detective. Am I right?" Ouma chips in, surprisingly quiet.

"Yeah! I'd—"

"You'd lure everyone into feeling a false sense of security by carrying all the trials."

"Yeah!"

"And once they're convinced of your devotion to the truth, you kill someone and lie your heart out at the trial. Since they all depend on you, you make them all vote wrong."

"Exactly! See, you get it! You get it!" Saihara is flushed and shaking, pools of saliva threatening to spill out of the corners of his grinning mouth.

Ouma eyes him warily. "That's not good for you, though. What if you've got someone like me facing off against you in the trial? What if I "get it" during the trial too?"

Somehow, he's not quite as prepared as he should be for Saihara's reaction.

Saihara's eyes grow wide and his smile grows wider. "That's good too! I have tons of executions planned for the Ultimate Detective. Some of them are really good. I'm sad that they won't all be used. I mean, Team Danganronpa could carry them over to the next game, but I might not get to see them, you know?"

Ouma doesn't respond.

"Do you want to read them? Or uh, just one? I can show you my favorite one. It's kinda long for a Danganronpa execution but I need to fit in all the details. And the props shouldn't be too expensive for their budget since it's mostly standard stuff you can order in bulk. They'd just have to have some way of venting out the poisonous fumes afterwards so—"

"No."

"H-huh? But—"

"Shut up. Go turn your Holostation on. What do you have on there?"

Saihara keeps hinting at his notebook full of executions while they play, but Ouma doesn't seem to notice at all.

 

On Friday, Saihara doesn't message Ouma about coming over. He might be feeling some petty spite from being spurned the day before. Doesn't matter. Ouma is more than capable of inviting himself.

 _What's it to him? I don't want to read about his repulsive fucking death fantasies._ He kicks a different plastic bottle down Saihara's street. This one's blue, with the wrapper falling off. _He's got some nerve trying to ignore me. I've got a job and an education and I'm way more useful to society than that fucking...ugh._

His fists clench inside the pockets of his large, misshapen uniform. _That fucking...unwashed NEET living off of daddy's bank account. Blowing it all on little girls' perfume and Kirigiri merch. God, I wish he would die. I wish useless drains on society would all die so I don't have to deal with those dumb sacks of shit all the time._

He finds the old bottle he kicked to Saihara's front lawn on Tuesday and stomps on it. _Better yet, we should make everyone in this godforsaken shithole of a country take an IQ test. Yeah, and anyone who's too stupid shouldn't have children. They should just shrivel up and die. Stupid fucks._

Of course, that's not the kind of thing he says out loud in the checkout station at WallabyMart, but on any given day it's likely that something similar is going through his head behind that cheek-splitting smile. _Thank you, sir, and have a nice day! By the way, sir, your seven-year-old just shat himself in our shopping cart. Yuh huh. He did. You should, uh, euthanize him. Stupid fuck._

Still seething, he jiggles the knob on Saihara's front door. Locked. Whatever. He yanks a couple of bobby pins out of the inside of his jacket and fucks the keyhole with them. When the handle finally turns and he steps inside the house, he spends another minute or two gloating at the incompetency of whoever designed the security in this neighborhood. _Serves them right! If someone breaks into their houses and murders them, it's their own damn fault!_

From there, he decides to pull a sneak attack on poor old Saihara-chan. He'll sneak up the stairs to the second story, yes, and he'll be so quiet about it that Saihara won't notice the creaking of his dilapidated staircase over the squawking of the execution music playing over his TV speakers.

Just as he hears the standard _wreeeeer, wreer wreeer wreeeeeeeeeeer_ of the execution ramping up to its horrible gory heights, Ouma pokes his head through the open doorway of Saihara's messy bedroom.

And then he steps back out.

And then he looks inside again.

"Hey, Saihara-chan."

Saihara whines. "Get ooouuuuut."

"I'm gonna help myself, thanks." Ouma doesn't even shut the door behind himself. He plops his ass down in Saihara's computer chair and wrestles the conveniently present family-sized Dorito bag into a headlock under his left arm.

Saihara whines again, throwing his head to the side.

Ouma shoves Doritos into his mouth.

The girl on screen is blue in the face and leaking out of every imaginable orifice.

Saihara is leaking too.

Ouma eats more Doritos.

The girl gasps for air but breathes nothing.

Saihara's narrow hips are jumping. He also struggles to breathe.

Ouma is eating Doritos.

_Can't breathe can't breathe I don't wanna die I don't wanna die I wanna go home I wanna go home I wanna see mommy_

_Oh god oh god ah fuck oh god nnngh fuck oh god haah hnnggh ahhh fuck_

_My fingers are orange._

The girl goes limp.

_Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK_

_Saihara-chan's dick is really shiny._

The girl hangs.

Saihara goes limp.

Ouma eats Doritos.

 

Late that night or early the next morning, Ouma stumbles into his apartment bathroom and upchucks a fat load of watery puke into the toilet. It's neon orange. He thinks back to the girl, clawing at her strangled neck, small frame thrashing back and forth in the air, eyes rolled deep into her skull. He thinks back to Saihara, huffing and puffing, thrashing his dick like there's no tomorrow, oozing and jetting into the stale air.

Ouma shuffles out of his boxers and lazily jacks off into the vomit-filled toilet bowl. Then he pukes some more.

He flushes the whole mess down the drain ass-naked with his limp dick hanging out, watching it swirl.

Meeting Saihara was a huge mistake.


	2. If this ain't love, what the hell's it supposed to be?

"'Sup, Shuuichi?"

"Shuuichi?"

"I watched you beat off. You're Shuuichi."

"No, I mean, how'd you know?"

"Return address." The stack of envelopes on his desk all bear the same black-pen scrawl of _Saihara Shuuichi_.

"Oh. Okay, so you're..." Shuuichi squints at a plastic WallabyMart badge. "Koyoshi?"

"Kokichi."

"Okay, Kokichi. I'm good. How are you?"

"I'm chipper, thanks. I love cleaning congealed piss pasta out of checkout aisle six. Favorite Tuesday tradition hands-down." Kokichi checks his nails. The one on his thumb is chewed short.

"Congealed...piss pasta?"

"Yep! The guy before me always leaves part of his lunch for me when I take over his shift. But get this. He leaves it _all over the inside of the cubbyhole under the bagging area._ And it smells like piss. I'm a grateful person and all, but even I get tired of the rancid piss stink after a while, y'know? Shit!" He slams a fist against Shuuichi's desk, making the drawers rattle. "I can picture that reeking wage ape down to his hairy little balls in my head each time! Bet he thinks of me when he takes out the Rando brand tortellini and drops his pants, huh? Hey Ouma, this one's for you. PSHHHHHHHH—"

Kokichi pistons his crotch upwards, aiming an invisible garden hose at Shuuichi's poor desk. Shuuichi seems vaguely entertained.

"Tortellini! It's always tortellini. And it smells like the men's bathroom after the janitors spend like twenty shifts toking in the parking lot instead of cleaning the man spooge off the walls."

"Ah, the janitors wouldn't..." Shuuichi attempts.

"Who gives a shit? Janitors aren't people." Kokichi waves a hand. "Meat sacks with mops. More and more are getting replaced by robots each day. Must suck to be worthless to society."

Shuuichi fumbles with his fingers. "There was an Ultimate Janitor on Danganronpa..."

"Oh really? How'd he die?"

"...He survived..."

Kokichi puts on his best condescending smirk. "See, that's why Danganronpa contestants are incompetent babies. People like that are just cannon fodder." He steeples his hands, bangs falling forward and creating a sinister shadow over his face. "If I was in his season, he'd be long gone, and I'd be rolling in cash. Call it taking out the trash, if you will."

Shuuichi looks thoughtful for a moment. "Would you...consider being the mastermind?"

"Don't you have to be a TDR employee and have shit loads of training? I'm busy."

"Well, like, if you didn't have to do that."

"...No." Kokichi folds his hands and scoots back in his seat, looking significantly less malevolent. "That's not fun. Then I have to pay attention to everyone else's fuckups instead of using them to my advantage."

"Aw."

"What?"

Shuuichi twiddles an open notebook and a pen back and forth in his hands, looking like a disappointed child. "Nothing."

"Show me." Kokichi leans over, his work polo hanging off of his thin frame like an ugly green drape. Shuuichi must've been hoping for this kind of reaction, because he hands over the notebook with little resistance.

It's open to a crude drawing.

Kokichi grins up at himself from between blue, college-ruled lines, brandishing a clown mask in his outstretched hand. He wears a pale monochrome outfit, form-fitting, with mismatched buttons. The aim must have been to make him resemble a jester, considering the diamond-patterned black and white scarf and the teardrop tattoo adorning one of his cheeks. OUMA KOKICHI, ULTIMATE PRANKSTER, the page reads.

The real Kokichi's heartbeat kicks up a notch. Shuuichi turns the page for him.

The next drawing is even cruder, as if Shuuichi hadn't had the time to polish it up yet. But it's clear what it's supposed to be.

The Ultimate Prankster has exchanged his usual garb for a flowing cape and a black, white, and red-patterned ensemble. His pants barely reach mid-thigh this time, showing off expanses of white paper flesh. The clown mask in his hand bears Monokuma's signature evil eye.

MASTERMIND OUMA-KUN.

Kokichi swallows thickly. His ears and throat burn.

"So, uh...what do you think?" Shuuichi's voice is soft.

Kokichi breathes.

Shuuichi doesn't.

"...What the fuck are these?" Then his voice breaks like eggs over his words, cracking and dripping. He jabs the paper where two purposeless white straps hang off of his mastermind persona's bare thighs. "Seems awfully kinky for a game about murder, Shuuichi. Are you into that? You fantasize all day about being in a TV show where you can pretend to be in high school again and stab people, right? Is this how you see me, Shuuichi? Is it because I'm small? Is it because I can convince store owner-chan that I'm in middle school? Are you drawing me like this because you want to _fuck little boys, Shuuichi_?"

Shuuichi's lips are twisting upwards. It doesn't look like a smile. His face is flushing.

"Tell me," Kokichi wheezes, latching onto the front of Shuuichi's T-shirt. "What kind of sick shit do you have going on in your head? No self-respecting straight guy would make me look like that. _What do you want to do to me_?"

Suddenly, it's Shuuichi yanking Kokichi up by the collar of his horrid green polo, face an alarming shade of pink, breath hissing in and out of his mouth through gritted teeth. "Don't pretend you're a saint, Kokichi."

"I'm not."

"Shut the fuck up."

Kokichi makes ten different things stop crawling up his throat at once and just glowers at Shuuichi.

"First of all, your _fruity gay little ass_ can't lie to me. You kiss me all the time. And now you're going to lecture me about being a self-respecting straight man?" Shuuichi barks out a laugh and gives Kokichi's entire body a rough shake. "Why are you so scandalized that I have nasty shit going on in my head? Everyone does. You, me, that store owner lady, _everyone_. People are born fucked up, Kokichi, and you can't get rid of that. We come out of the womb as bite sized—tiny, bite-sized psychopaths, and we love crushing ants and frogs to piles of mush, and we love sports, and we love—we love—we love violence!"

 _"You_ love violence, you nasty Danganronpa fanboy."

Eyes wide, Shuuichi clumsily maneuvers around the desk just to slam Kokichi into the bedroom wall. Kokichi clenches his teeth, quickly turning the same shade of lurid pink as Shuuichi. "YOU DO TOO!" Shuuichi shouts. He then drops to a deranged mumble, shaking all over. "You do too! All of us do...! And then our mommies and daddies tell us it's wrong and shit so we watch other people be violent on TV. And, and, _and_ , when we get old enough, society tells us it's wrong to get our rocks off to some stuff so we pretend we don't."

The room becomes silent save for Shuuichi's heavy breathing.

"We're liars, all of us. You can point at a pervert or a sicko and laugh, but he's just more honest than you are. Yeah, you can call me a degenerate, but I'm just an honest man. And you can call that store owner lady a nice, gullible woman, but who's to say she doesn't dream of your little body tied up underneath her at night?

Who's to say she isn't giving you all that free shit because she feels guilty for wondering what it's like to tape your big mouth shut and have you squirm and thrash and cry when she throws you into the trunk of her car? Who's to say she won't snap one day and lock you up in her basement, using her virtuous appearance as a cover, and get away with it? It's always the quiet ones, isn't it? The liars?"

Kokichi whimpers.

"You wouldn't lie to me now, would you, Kokichi?"

"Nhhnh."

"Your body wouldn't lie to me."

"Eheheheheheeeehhh...I'm all fucked up..." Kokichi is flushed red all the way down to his chest, dangling uselessly in Shuuichi's grasp. His tongue sticks out just a bit, nudging the rim of his bottom lip. He's breathing raggedly, looking up at Shuuichi with one eyelid lower than the other. "I got like this when you talked about her throwing me into the car...why...?"

Shuuichi grins. "I told you. You're a sick freak."

 

Saihara Shuuichi is not an attractive man. Kokichi comes to this conclusion every time he pulls out of a kiss expecting some bishounen with Shuuichi's hairstyle and eye color to stare back at him. Maybe that Shuuichi's eyes would be _gambogeish_ gray instead of booger gray. Maybe that Shuuichi wouldn't have a chin slightly too strong for his girly eyelashes, or a smattering of hair between his eyebrows that he forgot to pluck, or a thick miasma of saliva-scented vapor hovering just outside of his open mouth at all times.

"Dude, shut your fucking mouth for once."

Shuuichi's mouth snaps shut immediately. "Mmhrrrmh?" he asks.

Kokichi sighs, not caring that Shuuichi inhales his breath moments afterwards due to their closeness. "You can open it to talk, dipshit."

"Is it always open?" Shuuichi asks, concerned.

"Yeah. Hang on." Kokichi pulls one of his long sleeves over his palm and rubs it over the side of Shuuichi's drooling mouth almost tenderly. It feels good. His sleeve is sticky now and bears the same spit stink he can't stand when he leans in for a smooch, but he can feel Shuuichi's face under his fingers and it feels good.

When Shuuichi blushes like a maiden at the gesture, it's looks gross on him, a grown man. But it's kind of adorably gross. Kokichi doesn't know if it's pity or tolerance that makes his heart flutter in that instant. He wonders if Shuuichi is thinking the same thing—poor, pathetic Kokichi! No woman in the world would want him, but he can at least have me—when he leans forward, pushing their lips together again.

He'd be right, Kokichi thinks. No woman could possibly fall for Kokichi's stunted stature, his pudgy baby face, his wimpy muscles (or lack thereof), or, god forbid, the ever-prominent set of stupid monkey ears that he'd tried to tape to the sides of his head in seventh grade to no avail. But it's fine.

It's fine because Shuuichi is pulling him close again. He hides his ugly fat face in Shuuichi's chest, letting himself smile sappily because nobody can see him making that stupid expression. He keeps this and the warm shivers running one by one up his spine all to himself; it would be embarrassing if anyone knew.

Sometimes it's good enough just to have a body to hold.

 

"Kokichi, hold still." There's an exasperated edge to Shuuichi's voice.

"I'm _naked!_ You're holding a _razor!"_

"The blades aren't even out! A-and _I'm_ naked _too!"_

Kokichi squirms. Certain parts of his body are slippery with suds, and he's about as easy for Shuuichi to hold on to as a wet soap bar. "Yeah, but who knows what you're gonna do with it? You could tell me you're shaving my throat and suddenly— _shhk!"_ he mimes, lolling his head to the side and sticking his tongue out.

Shuuichi clutches at his own throat, making an involuntary gurgling noise. "Ew, ew, ew, ew, don't say that! I hate horizontal cu—oh, you're just trying to rile me up again, aren't you."

"Yup, yup."

"Ugh. Look, I'll just do the parts you can't reach, and you can do your neck and stuff."

"Okaaaayyy, fiiiiiiiiiiiiiine."

Kokichi shaves his face with no problem. That's normal. Then his jaw, then his neck, and then...it starts getting weird near his chest. He's never felt this _smooth_ before. He rubs over the rectangular patch of hairless skin he's just run the razor over with a hesitant finger. No texture. Gone.

He can feel Shuuichi breathing down his neck a bit as he continues, clearing his arms and then his stomach. The water gleams off of his doubly exposed skin and he wonders how it's possible to feel even more naked when he didn't have any clothes on in the first place.

...Armpits, too. Shuuichi's watchful gaze makes him self-conscious and he holds his breath without meaning to. Sides. Hips. Legs. Wow, this is a lot of work. When will Shuuichi stop fucking staring? The razor halts a few inches above his crotch. Kokichi gulps.

"Do I have to, uh..."

"You should try it." God, why does he sound so insistent? "Honestly. It's just hair, and it's not like anyone else is going to see it. Look, I can do it if you w—"

"No-you'll-cut-my-dick-off-or-something." It comes out of Kokichi's mouth as one word as he instantly takes a good chunk out of his pubes.

Fucking hell.

There's nothing underneath. He's never felt so emasculated.

In silence, he lops the rest of them off without ceremony and cleans the area up until it looks like nothing was there in the first place. "This is going to itch so bad when it starts growing in again," he grumbles. His scowl only deepens when he sights little specks of red blood blooming on his wet crotch.

"You pressed too hard," Shuuichi comments, reaching over without permission to just...wipe the blood off. Kokichi stares incredulously.

"You know what, just do my back now. Don't— _Okay_ , you can stop _groping_ me, _god."_ He forces the razor into Shuuichi's probing hand and wriggles his hips sideways like that'll help.

Shuuichi, who's reaching for his hip in order to steady him, grabs a handful of his ass instead.

"Dude!"

"I didn't mean it! Just hold still, Kokichi, please!"

It's hard to hold still. He doesn't like the idea of someone running a bladed object over his bare skin, but he's not a _fucking pussy_ , so he stays put. Arms folded stiffly in front of himself, he feels Shuuichi's fingers doing their dithering dance up to his shoulder blade, where they flatten and spread into five dots of sensation.

Oh. That's the razor pressing against his spine.

For the second time, the thought crosses his mind: _Shuuichi feels good._ What? He does. Each pass of the razor sends a little shiver through Kokichi's body, and he's stuck between wanting to stay alert and instinctively closing his eyes. He likes it when Shuuichi reverses the direction and shaves upwards, moving from the least sensitive parts of his back up to the part that makes his eyelids a little uneven no matter how hard he tries to keep them wide open.

Then Shuuichi takes hold of the wet hair smeared across the back of his neck, lifts it up, and starts skimming at his neck with the blades. Kokichi's brain goes blank.

"Oh god," he groans, eyes finally shut.

"You like how that feels?"

"Don't ever use that tone of voice again."

"Geez."

Shuuichi keeps going, and Kokichi keeps trying not to become a mess. It feels great. Everything feels great until all of a sudden Shuuichi starts prying his asscheeks apart and he squawks like a crow.

"What the fuck?"

"You're clean everywhere else. I'm not just going to leave it there."

"Shuu-chan's a total homo who wants to shave my butthole! Seriously, what the fuck."

"You want to be as bald as a newborn baby all over but with a hairy asscrack?"

Kokichi blanches. "What the hell is your problem?"

"You not letting me shave your—"

"OKAY, PROBLEM SOLVED," Kokichi yells, face tinged a formidable mix of purple and red, and bends over.

The running water is the only noise in the shower for a very long time.

"Are you done back there?"

"Your balls—"

"Cool, shut up."

A very very long time.

 

The Ultimate Detective's erotic silhouette bends the rays of the setting sun coming through the window like an intricate paper cutout. One might believe that her name ought to be Kyouko _Kirigami_. Perspiration slides down her neck as she brushes aside thick locks of hair the hue of wild lilacs. Her lips part, letting her exhale words that escape her like a sweet sigh of desire: "Naegi-kun, it seems my panties are wet."

Naegi-kun tucks his shitty purple dye job behind one ear and says, "Dude, holy fuck."

"Kokichi will you just let me have this _one_ —"

"Oh my _god—_ "

"It's not that hard to just _play along—_ "

"I can't, dude. I'm trying. I can't get it up to that."

Shuuichi works his lip a couple times over with his teeth. He's not pleased. "Okay, we can skip the foreplay. I can just blow you."

Kokichi picks at the mattress. "Yeah, guess that works."

The mattress loses two threads, three threads, four, all bundled up in a ball of string between Kokichi's fingers. He rolls it back and forth. Nobody says anything.

"You, uh..." Shuuichi awkwardly adjusts his wig. "You gonna take your pants off?"

"Uh, yeah." Thread ball drops, lands on the floor next to a thick clump of Shuuichi's shed hairs. Kokichi fiddles with the button of his jeans.

"What's wrong? Is it small?"

Kokichi scoffs. "I'm five foot one and I eat debt for dinner. It's like a third nipple." He unzips his fly. "How's that for self-deprecating humor?"

"You ruined the joke."

"Wasn't funny in the first place."

His belt sags around mid-thigh for a second or so before a pair of boxers covers it up. Kinda feels like he's going to the bathroom. Shuuichi stares at his dick.

"You're uh...not hard."

"Great detective work."

Shuuichi scowls. "Look, do you want me to put some porn on? Just...get it up somehow. I can't work with this _—_ " He prods Kokichi's dick emphatically _._ " _—_ this thing."

"Shut up for a second." Kokichi puts a fist to his forehead, squeezing his eyes shut. Gotta get it up. Gotta get the blood flowing downstairs. What was the last thing he got off to? Uhhhh. Tits. Think about tits. Some chick oiling up her tits and sandwiching his dick between them. Yeah, that's a good start. Kirigiri oiling up her tits—

He catches Shuuichi's eye for a second and loses all of his progress.

 _Tits, goddammit._ Don't look at Shuuichi. Shuuichi's not there. It's Kirigiri, on her knees, in the nude. Big fat tits hanging down. Kirigiri opening up her hot, cavernous mouth for him, full of damp heat and a slick tongue.

Kirigiri's mouth _on his dick._

Kokichi hisses at the sudden contact, gripping the mattress as something hot and slimy engulfs the tip of his cock. Kirigiri drools around his girth, marinating his head with her saliva. It's so good. It's so fucking good for half of a second.

Then he hears a noise like someone peeling two long strips of packing tape apart, a big loud _slrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp_. His head snaps up. He stares down at the nasty son of a bitch slurping up his cock like an actual vacuum cleaner and his left eye twitches. "Uh, Shuuichi? What the hell are you doing?"

Shuuichi stops looking like a horse for a second and squints up at him. "I'm sucking your dick?"

Kokichi gawks. "Yeah, like a fucking sippy cup!"

"How else am I supposed to suck the cum out of your balls?" Shuuichi almost shouts, gesturing at said balls.

"Oh my god..."

"How many times are you going to say that? I'm trying my absolute best to pleasure you, and you just—"

"You think my dick's a fuckin' _straw_..."

"See, that's what I'm talking about! You just whine about what I'm doing wrong even though I'm—"

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry. You're trying really hard and I value that. Continue."

Shuuichi huffs, lowers himself, and gets back to work.

_Slrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp._

He's still fucking doing it. " _Shuuichi,_ " Kokichi groans, but not out of pleasure.

"You like that?"

"Just gimme a damn handjob."

 

The apartment's lonely. His housemate's out for some fraternity event, thank god.

Kokichi is hunched over a mug that's unmistakably one of the freebies from the last career fair with a solid block of instant ramen speared on a fork. He jams the ramen block into the mug and withdraws it, revealing a sickly paste of chicken flavoring and cold water on the tip. Crunch.

A blank document stares at him from inside his too-bright monitor. The cursor blinks at him menacingly.

The report was due eight days ago. Crunch. Broken ringlets of carbohydrate plop into brownish monosodium glutamate goo. He still hasn't started.

He's spent the past eight days bouncing back and forth between trying to start the report, giving up, and masturbating. Today's not different. He's still not going to start it, and he'll fall asleep at his desk or on top of his bed without blankets.

He tries to start the report for an hour as he finishes his dinner. His dad calls. He hides the dirty mug with all the cluttered scraps of notes and miscellany that Dad's not allowed to see.

When the camera flickers on, Kokichi is stationed in front of a backdrop of a clean shelf and several glossy posters. "Hey Dad," he waves.

His father's bony face and salt-and-pepper hair lag, frames of motion jumping from a blurry close-up frown to a clearer one. "Kokichi," his old man says. "You know your cousin? The one who visited us when you came back home for break?"

"Yeah?"

"She finally saved up enough from her job to get flash therapy."

"Oh?"

"Yeah." Dad rubs his thumb between the two halves of his sparse mustache, one strike down the philtrum. "It only took a few sessions for her depression to go away. Now she's grinding out research like nobody's business. Really amazing what that technology can do."

"Cool."

"Did you get any interviews?"

Kokichi sneers. "You're not subtle, pops."

"Why do I have to be? You need a better-paying job. What you have to do now is work hard for your future. You can focus on what makes you happy after you undergo treatment. Money now, passion later."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, shit costs an arm and a leg."

"Kokichi."

"Don't you think it's a little bit fucked up that some fat cat's kid who's done nothing but sit on his ass gets to have a shiny world-class talent beamed into his brain when he's four years old and the rest of us have to bag groceries until we're 50 to be normal in the head?"

Dad snuffles, wipes his mustache again. "You can't sit there and yell that it's not fair and expect someone to pay for you. The more you hold yourself back like this, the more you delay your treatment. I suggest you focus on getting hired by a..."

Something pops up on the bottom right corner of Kokichi's monitor.

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Season 52 premiere in an hour_

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Come over?_

"—and then you can get whatever job you want. Heck, I don't care if you want to be a pro grocery bagger. Do you understand?"

"Cool."

"I don't think you were listening to anything I just said."

"Sorry, what?"

Dad harrumphs. "I'll send you a to-do list. I want you to follow it carefully until you have enough money to pay for flash therapy. After you get treated, you can do what you want. Okay?"

"You're literally going to give me a to-do list?"

"Yes. As far as I can tell, you're not making any progress. You don't have a choice, Kokichi. This is for your own good."

Kokichi's face twists in displeasure. Dad's right. He's right about it all. "Okay, I'll do it." It just feels bad to relent; tastes like defeat. _Yes, Dad, whatever you say. I'm a grown-ass man, but I can't do anything on my own, so you can tell me what to do and I'll do it._

"Good." Dad gives him an encouraging thumbs-up. God, he hates that shit. "I'll check on you next week. Say hi to Mom for me if she calls you."

Dad hangs up.

"Fuck," Kokichi grunts. "Fucking fuck."

**_checkersq:_ ** _sure_

**_checkersq:_ ** _sorry dad called and wouldn't piss off. god. i'll be there in 15-20 min_

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Ok~_

It doesn't take him fifteen to twenty minutes to get to Shuuichi's house from here. He's just angry and needs to mope. Kokichi flops down on his bed, sulking.

Dad's right.

Why the hell hasn't he gotten his act together by now? What's he doing with his life? Eight days, Kokichi mourns. Eight whole wasted days. He's just eating and sleeping and making waste. There's no reason for him to exist.

_Worthless pieces of shit should shrivel up and die._

Worthless pieces of shit are the faceless masses in the checkout line at WallabyMart. No talent, no flash therapy, not doing any useful work. Not doing anything for society except existing.

Buck-toothed guy who bought fifteen packs of toilet paper—worthless.

Little old lady who can't tell Kokichi apart from her fat, middle-aged daughter—worthless.

Schoolkid with a pimple-spangled face lurking behind her Botox balloon of a mother—worthless.

Pathetic raccoon-eyed manchild working in checkout aisle six, trying to ignore the stench of piss and soggy Rando brand tortellini—

_I'm worthless._

Some people don't deserve to live. That's a fact of life, Kokichi thinks. Sucks that he's one of those people. Sucks. It really sucks. He almost forgot about that for a while, really thought he had a place on this Earth. Haha, stupid. He hasn't been thinking about it as much since—

Since he met Shuuichi.

Because if Shuuichi sold all of his merch, settled down in a cheaper place, and asked his parents for the rest of what was supposed to be his tuition, he'd have more than enough money for flash therapy.

He could really be the detective he dreams of being on the television screen.

But he isn't.

Shuuichi's pathetic. Shuuichi's a bigger failure than Kokichi is. Shuuichi is ten times as worthless! Pathetic! Pathetic! Pathetic!

_Pathetic! Pathetic! Pathetic smelly NEET!_

_God, why am I hanging out with someone so disgusting? Is he rubbing off on me? Fucking gross._

Failure! Failure! Failure!

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _BTW_

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Are you ok?_

Ah.

**_checkersq:_ ** _wym_

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _You sounded angry? It's just a hunch_

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _There's time before the show starts if you want to vent about your dad lol_

Shuuichi is...

**_checkersq:_ ** _no you dilly dipass what do you think i am, 13_

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Geez! Well sorry for caring!_

**_checkersq:_ ** _yeah fuck off_

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _...Do you hate me?... ;_;_

**_checkersq:_ ** _i hate your guts_

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Oh... </3_

**_checkersq:_ ** _that's a lie_

**_checkersq:_ ** _love you shuu <3_

Kokichi shoves his phone into his pocket, steps out of his apartment complex's double doors, and tears off into the night.

 

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _=_=;_

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _You're weird_

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _But_

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _I love you too Ko <3_

 

Shuuichi's room is pitch black when the Danganronpa theme finally comes on. The faint suggestions of a bed, some dressers, and a desk flicker in the low light.

Shuuichi's fingers are already orange. "Who do you like so far?" he asks.

"The playboy."

"Green hair?"

"Yep."

"The Ultimate Adventurer, huh...he's going to be popular with the girls."

"Are you trying to say something?" Kokichi elbows him in the gut.

"Ow—no!" Shuuichi coughs up part of a Dorito.

Kokichi chuckles faintly. "Who do _you_ like, then?"

"Pink hair. I think she might be the rival."

"Waifu bait."

"You say that about every girl!"

"Mmhmmm," Kokichi hums around a mouthful of junk food.

One by one, they meet the poor Ultimate students that are going to be slaughtered in the weeks to come. Kokichi admits that green hair is "kinda fine"; pink hair drops a few notches in Shuuichi's book when she turns out to be a weepy wallflower.

In the back of his mind, over the scripted chatter playing out on screen, Kokichi finds it curious that someone like Shuuichi is so invested in a show that's essentially flash therapy porn. Sixteen students, each at the peak of their field, implanted with insane abilities by beam models too potent to release to the public...pitted against each other in a battle of suspicion and betrayal. If he loves it so much, why hasn't he undergone the lights?

After two commercial breaks and some end credits, Shuuichi wades through empty bags and boxes to get to the switch. Flips it. Suddenly, Kokichi can see.

"...Wow." Shuuichi sways slightly, covered in orange smears, pizza sauce, and patches of grease. He also seems to have popped a few zits during the broadcast. By the way he's staring at Kokichi, Kokichi is probably sporting the same stains.

"Are you gonna be alright going home at this hour?" Shuuichi asks, wading back through the junk.

It's like nothing exists outside except for a lone street lamp that doesn't cast much light anyway. Kokichi flashes him a nervous grin. "No? I dunno, could get mugged. I'll sleep in your bathtub."

"Oh, no, it's fine." Shuuichi sits back down, scooting his chair closer to Kokichi's. "I mean, I think we're close enough to share a bed, right?"

"I'm kinda pooped. I don't really wanna bump dicks tonight, if that's what you're getting at."

"Wha—no, that's not what I—Do you want to sleep together or not?" Shuuichi's looking frustrated, pouty and slightly red from how stuffy it is in the room.

"Aha..." Yeah, sleeping together with that...might be bearable. "Fine, I'll let you sleep with me."

It makes Shuuichi smile.

He runs a Cheeto-dust-coated thumb across Kokichi's chin and into his lower lip, a grainy paint stroke made up of cheddary particles marking its path. As he leans in falteringly, still a little hesitant in spite of how familiar the action is, he reeks of the pools of grease that settle in the pockmarks that riddle the rubbery cheese surface of a cheap pizza slice.

Kokichi blushes.

"Hey, Shuui—mmm..."

 

The moon is three stripes of white through the tattered blinds. Kokichi speaks softly. "Shuuichi, I wanna be worthless with you."

Shuuichi snores.

"Nobody has to know that we existed. We can just...waste away in this house together. When your funds run out, we can kill ourselves, I dunno."

Their one blanket shifts noisily. "Huh? You say something, babe?"

"You farted and it smells bad."

"No I didn't..."

"Smelly boy."

Shuuichi can't take offense to it when Kokichi cuddles up against him, a bit damp with sweat but soft and welcoming nonetheless. They tangle together.

The two of them drift off to sleep in a too-hot room, plastered with all kinds of food stains, but in each other's arms. The last part of the botched monologue goes unsaid.

_Oh, Shuuichi, I wanna shrivel up and die with you._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Janitors are very important and we should all appreciate them and their hard work.


	3. Jerkoff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm dazed at the comments the last chapter received, and also being noticed by senpai?? I've gone flying. Thank you all so much!
> 
> Here's another (really long) chapter of Oumasai incel AU.

**_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Good morning Kokichi!_

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Did you sleep well, sweetheart~?_

 **_checkersq:_ ** _just took a massive asshole rupturing shit_

 **_checkersq:_ ** _disastrous. wholeass log of canless b &m brown bread. blood on the toilet paper and everything_

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _O.O Blood? Is there something you need to tell me about ummm_

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Y-You don't have to hide it from me. I'll keep it a secret I promise! This doesn't change anything between us!_

 **_checkersq:_ ** _bro_

 **_checkersq:_ ** _you sucked_

 **_checkersq:_ ** _my dick_

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Oh XP_

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Anyway, I slept TERRIBLY last night_

 **_checkersq:_ ** _i know_

 

Kokichi's got a routine.

Ten A.M., he blinks awake, sometimes transmogrified into a slug in front of his computer and sometimes starfish-suctioned to his bed with a sticky layer of sweat. If he's at his desk, he flops onto the bed, and if he's in bed, he lurches over for the tube of lotion on his nightstand and takes care of his morning wood.

He doesn't fantasize about anything or anyone in particular. Sometimes he thinks of a mouth around his cock, bare stretches of skin, chests and backs and legs that could be either male or female. He doesn't pay attention. He wipes the cum off of his hand with a tissue, drops it in the trash, and rolls back over to sleep another hour.

Around eleven, he oozes out of bed and into his computer chair. An hour of half-conscious fuckall rolls by. Inevitably, he checks the Hope's Peak Danganronpa forum for more useless chatter, and inevitably, someone posts a blurry picture of Amami Rantarou with his abs out next to an inane caption along the lines of "I want to lick his tummy". That'll do, says Kokichi's dick. Another tissue for the garbage bin.

Kokichi hates that his right arm has a visible bicep but his left arm doesn't.

On odd days, he'll take a shower. Otherwise, he'll take a piss or something. Sometimes he pisses in the shower, but nobody has to know that. Then he brushes his teeth.

Anything after that is a dizzying cycle of sitting at his computer, getting bored of sitting at his computer, doing something else, and then going back to his computer. The "something else" in question is usually eating something out of a plastic package or pumping out another watery orgasm.

2:30 rolls around and he traipses down the stairs to the first floor, out through the double doors, and over to the bike rack. The wind is too fast against his face on the way to WallabyMart. Polo on, he tolerates the odor of aisle six and the stupid fucks who want it all double-bagged and the meat juice seeping over the edges of the conveyor belt. He prays that that lady isn't here this week, the one with big hair like a dead rat. She screeches in around closing time on a Friday night and he can never tell whether she's buying food for her kids or her sixteen overweight labradors. She calls them _my babies_. When he clocks out, his legs are so limp it's a miracle his bike doesn't keel over and smash him on the side of the road.

At scattered points during the night and into the early hours of pre-dawn, there's always a chance of some little happening that makes him take his tired cock out of his underwear and give it yet another go. Maybe he sees a _really_ nice picture of Rina from season 40, maybe Shuuichi texts him some stupid shit that unfortunately makes his dick happy. Kokichi wonders if he's supposed to be this insatiable or if he's just got nothing to do.

Eventually, he's too tired to stay awake. Sometimes he makes it to his bed, and sometimes he doesn't. He sleeps. When he awakes, it's ten in the morning again, and the cycle repeats. The world goes on and Kokichi doesn't.

 

But one day, it's different.

The individual dents and grooves of that familiar stucco ceiling come into focus at 7:02, three hours ahead of schedule. The heat of the late morning sun has yet to melt Kokichi into his rumpled sheets like cheese on a sidewalk, and when he rolls over, nothing sticks to his back. Everything is imperceptibly nicer.

He jacks off, showers, brushes his teeth.

Shuffles into the kitchen.

...Fixes himself an egg.

He watches it bubble in the pan. Probably should've added cooking oil underneath. What do you eat with an egg anyway? Milk? Toast?

Egg goes on plate. Plate goes on table. Kokichi smiles a tired smile.

His housemate wanders in around then, attracted by the paranormal sizzling and clinking, and stands sort of agape in the door at the fact that Kokichi exists outside of his bedroom and is awake at eight in the morning.

"Morning."

Housemate realizes his mouth is open and closes it before the flies can get in. Damn, what's his name again? "Hey. You're up early."

"Yeah." _Yeah. Cool. Yeah._ Those are the safe options; inoffensive, antiseptic, unobtrusive. End of conversation. Kokichi goes back to pretending he's an empty block of air.

Housemate doesn't get the hint. He stands there, glances over at the box of Bunny Bites carrot cake cereal on the counter, scuffs the floor with his three-star-hotel complimentary slippers. Glances over at the empty chair sitting in front of a plate with an egg on it. "So, um, I thought I should tell you..."Drags Kokichi back into the same plane of existence with this goofy embarrassed look on his face.

"Yeah?" _Cool? Yeah? Fuck, man, let's just get this over with._

"Some of my pals are coming over tonight, and we're...they'll stay away from your room, scout's honor. We're uh. Just having a get together. Might get a little...loud, but we won't bother you. Promise."

Guy's quaking in his cute little cellophane-packaged low-production-cost kicks. _What the hell kind of cryptid do I look like to you,_ Kokichi thinks. "Huuuh? How come I didn't know about this 'till now?"

"...I'm sorry, man, I forgo—"

"Listen here, Yamada." Yamada's face crumples in a way that could mean either _please don't hit me_ or _it's Yamashiro, actually_. Same thing. "You keep your goons away from my room. No poking around. No peeking, no _nothing_. No shaking the ground. I don't want anything dislodging in there and you better hope to fuck nothing does. Yeah?"

"Yeah! Cool!" Yamada falsettos, ready to pee.

"Is that it?"

"Yeah!"

"Bye-bye, Yamada-chan."

Yamada-chan is dismissed. His slippers clap all the way down the hall to his room.

Kokichi takes a bite out of his egg and realizes it's not seasoned.

 

That night, he concludes that the good mood he'd been in was a fluke. Nothing has actually changed. He just happened to wake up three hours early.

The cottage-cheese lumps covering the ceiling stare down at him. He can hear Yamazaki and his buddies two rooms down, all beating each other off or something. Words float through the walls easier than Yamamoto probably accounts for, because every now and then there's a big roar of laughter and Kokichi can hear the little bastard shushing them with a _hey guys, keep it down, I think my flatmate Ouma is a drug dealer or something. Yeah, he said something about not...dislodging shit in his room...think he's got a meth lab in there?_ And then there's another roar of laughter, but quieter, so they don't disturb the meth lab.

Yamaoka proceeds to entertain his goon troupe with descriptions of Kokichi for an agonizing fiveish minutes. The picture he paints is so unflattering that it sends a big acrid throb up through Kokichi's throat and into his nose.

Short, slouchy, volatile. Two black eyes where sleep debt punches him in the face. Looks a bit like Watanabe-kun from middle school, but _before_ puberty. _Before_. _Yeah, I know. Scratch that, he's basically Watanabe-kun in his middle school years but like...kinda...I dunno, fatter? Guys, stop laughing, he'll hear us and sic his druggie underlings on me._

Kokichi lies still and doesn't breathe, as if breathing would drown out Yamaguchi's grating voice.

_He's such an offbeat guy. You should hear the things he says to keep me out of his room. There's—yeah there was the dislodging shit from earlier—haha, guys, shut up—there was this one time I was taking out my recycling and I knocked on his door to ask if he had any, right? He poked his head through the door and was like, "Huuuuh? You're not the guy who takes away the bodies when I'm done with them. Get lost."_

Laughter.

_Can we meet him, Aoyama? He's here, right?_

_He even has eighth-grade syndrome, huh...are you sure you're not just rooming with a middle schooler?_

_Man, my roommate's so boring. Hey, can we switch? Can I have Ouma-kun instead?_

_Careful, he'll dislodge your head while you're sleeping._

_Haha, dislodge._

_The face Aoyama-kun is making right now is the one he makes when he has to dislodge his penis from Ouma-kun's ass for the fifth time that week._

_Oh my god._

_Ha ha, shut up._

_Shut the fuck up, Fujimori._

Yeah, Fujimori, shut the fuck up. Kokichi rolls over and faces the wall. The three, four, five, who knows how many goons in Yamane's room start talking about their own roommates and housemates and the conversation moves away from Mr. undead garden gnome with Watanabe-kun from middle school's face. Yamasaki, Yamagata. Actually, it's Aoyama.

Aoyama doesn't mean harm. Couldn't mean harm, when he gets this flakey pee-your-pants grin at vile little drug kingpin Kokichi threatening him while eating an egg. Couldn't mean harm because hey, Kokichi probably isn't even a person to him, just a funny motorized goblin that he's got to put up with for the low rent. Up at ten, in and out of the kitchen, doesn't speak unless it's some gobbledygook that's supposed to keep Aoyama out of the meth lab. It's the perfect quirky scrap of anecdotal nonsense for an evening hangout with the boys.

Bravo, Kokichi, you silly ornament. You're a riot. You mannequin, you yard fixture.

More chortling comes through the walls, this time at that clown Fujimori on the phone with a girlfriend who thought he was funny at the business school's annual summer picnic but later realized his fondness for smegma jokes.

Fujimori's girlfriend breaks up with him over the phone. Fujimori's sad, boo hoo.

Boo hoo. At least he _had_ a girlfriend.

Aoyama's goons volleyball back and forth between being sympathetic and oh-so-amused in the cruel way guys do. Kokichi, unseen, rolls his eyes. Shit, how many of them are in there? He's counted at least five, but some of them sound the same when they're all snickering at something unfunny that was said in a goofy voice.

Is this all of them?

Is Aoyama a popular guy?

Does Aoyama have a girlfriend?

He can't, right? Otherwise Kokichi would know.

Aoyama's not a model, but he looks like he could be a boyfriend.

Aoyama has at least five buddies.

They like him enough to come hang out in his room.

They're close enough to all tell Fujimori to forget about that slut.

Aoyama has friends.

Who does Kokichi have?

Salt-and-pepper Dad, bitter Mom who moved off to some coastal nowhere to paint and smell bath salts. Indistinct amalgam of every homeroom teacher and friendly girl who just wanted to be nice, saying hi to him in the hallways for months until they finally accept that he's never going to give them more than a half-wave with no eye contact. Guy who stopped talking to him after the one semester they shared a class. All those distant people, and...Shuuichi.

Shuuichi.

Shuuichi, his chance forum pal, his only friend. Okay, friend with benefits. Fuckbuddy. _Lover_ is too far.

The only person he is close to is someone more pathetic than he is. _How's that for self-deprecating humor,_ he laughs to himself, and doesn't laugh back.

It starts ringing in his head. It starts ringing, and he doesn't like it, but it's loud and it's clear and it's gnawing on him. _Shuuichi is all I have._

 

_Shuuichi is all I have. Shuuichi is all I have._

Shuuichi texts him while he's lifting a crate of assorted hundred-Calorie snack packs up onto a shelf next to the jumbo trail mix jars.

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _TDR is revealing the season 52 cross-promotion tonight_

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Come over after work!_

Normally, he'd be perfectly content to watch the forum for all the buzz and let Shuuichi babble and theorize about it to him over text, but _Shuuichi is all I have_ so he goes

 **_checkersq:_ ** _k._

The snack packs are all fitting in there easy and he's got a nice rhythm going up until that fat ape with the tortellini fixation has to leave early because he's got a baby shower to go to. Got a baby shower to go to, smelling like piss and soggy pasta in a brown tweed suit made for people who don't work nine to five at WallabyMart.

Kokichi takes up checkout aisle six in his stupid little WallabyMart visor and sure enough, Old Faithful's been there, mysterious yellowy fluid drying in tacky spots underneath the register with an almost-whole tortellini sitting in the middle of it all.

 _Wow! One whole tortellini!_ And he's back to the cadence of the register singing beep-beep- _splat_ as he pokes and yanks and slaps it all over. All the stupid fucks and worthless pieces of shit churn through the line one by one, and the rag Kokichi uses to soak up the meat juice slowly turns a ruddy overchewed-bubblegum pink.

At closing time, he spots the rat lady with her big cart full of dog-or-kid's food squeaking towards him, her fat mouth hanging open in preparation for story time about her babies. Yeah, no. He turns his light off with the haste of a man possessed, doesn't even steal his usual pack of Altoids, and clocks the fuck out.

 

Bike clatters against the vinyl siding of Shuuichi's modest house. Sky is yellow. Shuuichi "sbellz lige azz," says Kokichi, holding his nose as he shimmies past the source of the stench. Shuuichi sputters, returns from the first-story half-sized bathroom smelling like "azz wid sobe perfube on id." Shuuichi sputters again and Kokichi relents with a shit-eating grin.

"Have you had dinner yet?"

No, Kokichi hasn't.

Shuuichi fixes him a bowl of Rando brand tortellini and Kokichi punches him in the shoulder.

"Ow!"

"Fuck you, did you just get these because I keep complaining about that guy?"

"Well, yeah?" Shuuichi's got the shit-eating grin now.

"Yeah?" Kokichi can't help himself. "Aww, you care about me."

The humidity in Shuuichi's compact, onion-scented kitchen increases by two percent as the shit slides out of Shuuichi's grin. "Yeah, I do." Bashful, he cards long fingers through his oily hair, looking off to the side. "I love you so much, Kokichi."

Oh no.

Shuuichi's voice is like mealy apples. Just is. It's got some sweetness to it, all tight and sort of girly, but also this strange and overdue crumbliness that picks at your ears. "You're amazing." He swallows, thick snake sliding around underneath the skin of his throat. "You're nice, and you're fun to be around, and you're cute, and I'm so lucky I met you."

For a brief, hallucinatory moment, Kokichi eats it up along with the whole tortellini speared on his fork. He believes that Shuuichi loves him more than words can express, that Shuuichi would hold his hand into heaven or hell or whatever lies beyond the decay of their bodies. For a moment, it doesn't matter that Shuuichi looks like a half-baked drag queen on his good days and breathes through his mouth. All that matters is that the two of them are here, together.

Too bad Shuuichi's a goddamn liar.

Nice, cute. If you're touching someone's dick all the time you have to justify yourself for it. An ugly motherfucker can't be sex on legs, but he can be cute. He can't be an angel, but he can be nice. And then there's the rest of the bargain bin compliments that can be tossed around every which way—special, interesting, different, _fun to be around_.

If you're touching someone's dick, you don't have to mean any of it. It's just polite to say things like that. White lies. Kind lies. Sometimes you lie without meaning to. Shuuichi doesn't want to harm him any more than Aoyama does.

Kokichi opens up his mouth and the lies come squirting out like oodles of linguine through a pasta grinder. "Same. I'm awful glad I met you, Shuuichi. You mean the world to me."

"Eheh, heh!" Shuuichi lights up like toaster coils, dangerously red. Kokichi's mouth is full of filth and tortellini. One tortellini, two tortellini, three tortellini, four. The upside is that he has an excuse not to talk. The downside is that he can smell the Pavlovian ghost of Old Faithful and all its yellow residue.

 

The cross-promotion this season is a somber sunken-eyed ultimate triple question mark and his flashy custom Barrancas woven jacket. Shuuichi thinks it's a bit on the nose to actually have this guy wearing the shit around on stage, but it blends in well enough.

"I was never a fan of the amnesiac trope," Shuuichi confesses, folded in half with his elbows on his knees. "Wonder how he'll go."

Barrancas smolders on screen in front of a black backdrop, his half-European facial structure probably wetting millions of panties. He adjusts his jacket (merino wool, available after season in five different colors) and addresses an unseen viewer in his rich baritone voice—"I'm nobody, and I'll always be nobody. There's nothing wrong with that."

 _Wonder how he'll go._ Barrancas will die a smoldering death for millions of wet panties. The cross-promotions have a slim twenty percent survival rate; they're tragic, striking, and outlandishly lucrative. Oh, and typically male. All Team Danganronpa has to do is build him up, spill his guts, and open up shop for the waves of hysterical women mourning his grisly demise. They don't rake in nearly as much cash when he survives. It's a pattern tracing back to the very beginning of it all, the Ur of Danganronpa cash cows—the one and only, crazy-haired, crazy-eyed, ethereally pretty and horribly tortured Komaeda Nagito.

These walking billboards all represent hope in some way or another. If they're not hope-crazy, they're despair-crazy, and that's just the antithesis of hope. It comes around. They echo the classic Komaeda insanity. It's only a matter of time before Barrancas goes off the deep end.

Barrancas is bare-torsoed now, clothed in only his jacket and a pair of slacks. How about that merino wool, ladies? You can wear it in five different colors after the season ends and he's nothing but ash in an expensive jar that you can buy if your dad's a big-name CEO with a loose wallet. You can wear his clothes around like a weeping widow. Go on. There's no shame in it. You can get it in his color, in his size. You can sleep in it. You can cry into it. He's not coming back.

"Hey, did you know?" Shuuichi asks. Kokichi doesn't know, no. "They always film these before the season starts. He still has his memories."

Barrancas lies down in bed, abs on display, doleful and handsome face angled away from the camera. Profile shot. Barrancas knows he is fucked.

"Do you see that crease in his forehead right there? That's not acting. That's real fear," Shuuichi gushes.

Fake fear or real fear, Kokichi can't tell. Doesn't even look like fear, just a deep frown. He figures Shuuichi's more of an expert than he is. The Danganronpa 52 x Barrancas commercial graphic fills up the screen.

"So what do you—"

"Having trouble sleeping at night? Me too. But thanks to—" The insomniac lady blinks out of existence. The wizard who banished her lays down his beat-up plastic wand. "So what do you think?" he continues, shiny eyeballs rolling in their sockets to point their apertures at Kokichi.

Kokichi shrugs. "I could see him being the rival."

"I still think the rival is Umi-chan."

"Eh."

Shuuichi unfolds, fidgets. Fidgets some more. Pries colonies of bacteria out from under his fingernails.

"Hey, Kokichi?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you do me a favor?"

Kokichi looks at him. "Yeah, what?"

"I, er..." Averted eyes. Shuuichi's touching his head again, playing with a few errant strands of hair that Kokichi can't see in the dark. "Can you...review my application for season 53?"

"Sorry, what?"

"I'm applying. To Danganronpa, I mean." Exhale. Fidget. "I've done it before. A lot. I even sent in the form by snail mail, to seem...unique, I guess, but it obviously didn't work. It never works, and I dunno what I'm doing wrong." He throws a sideways glance at Kokichi, who's sucking on the roof of his mouth with a mannequin's blank stare plastered over his face. "Just look at it and tell me what you think, y'know. If you want."

Scattered envelopes that say _Saihara Shuuichi_. That's what it was? Idiot. _Idiot._

"Sure, let's see it." Kokichi pushes his hands together but only one knuckle cracks. "I wanna know how big of a lame-o you sound on paper."

Kokichi has no one.

 

"And that's all you'd change?"

"I think. It looks pretty good other than that bit."

"Thanks, Kokichi, you're the best." Shuuichi leans in with his slimy mouth puckered and Kokichi almost snorts at the sight, but holds it in.

"Uhn-huh. I mow." _I know_ , it was supposed to be, but Shuuichi's spittle-coated teeth are munching on his bottom lip. Shuuichi's spittle-coated tongue is licking his incisors. He lets Shuuichi in.

It's all right for a while. Tolerable. But there's only so much of Shuuichi's fun muscle fucking that area between his molars and the inside of his cheek that he can take so he starts spitting Shuuichi's tongue out. "Ngghh huuhhh," Kokichi tries. _That's enough_ , it was supposed to be, but it's unrecognizable; Shuuichi mistakes it for a moan and pulls him up by the splatter of meat juice on the left breast of his work polo.

"Mmmnnn!" Drool leaks down Kokichi's chin. He doesn't know whose it is.

"You're vocal today," Shuuichi murmurs in what he probably thinks is a seductive way. Oh, it's not. It's really not.

Kokichi lets out an honest-to-god animal snort. The moment he realizes what he's done, he can't stifle the horse whinny that escapes through his nose more than his mouth. His ugly laughter renders the mood obsolete, beyond repair. Shuuichi's face turns into a big patch of red.

"What? What's so funny?" Whoopsie.

"Nothing! Nothing. You made a dumb face, is all. It was—" Liar. "—cute. It was cute. Shit, now I'm all gay. Thanks, Shuuichi." He gives Shuuichi a hearty whack on the back. Shuuichi is a tomato.

"You're thanks. I mean, you're gay. I mean," Shuuichi the tomato babbles. "M-move onto the optional responses."

Kokichi moves onto the optional responses.

_Sample Execution._

A pit of dread opens up inside of him.

"Oh, it's this part. Heh." Shuuichi's fidgeting moves downstairs. One leg kicks. "Tell me when you're done reading, okay?"

Okay.

 

_GAME OVER_

_Saihara-kun has been found guilty._

_We will now begin his punishment._

Despite his best efforts in creating a difficult murder mystery and misleading his classmates during the trial, Saihara was caught! The sentence has been passed; there's nothing left for him to do but smile placidly even as beads of sweat roll down his face.

While he's standing there among the clever people who figured him out, a long chain snakes out from a compartment to the side of the trial grounds and darts toward him. At the end of this chain is a collar, which snaps around Saihara's neck and drags him away.

Saihara ends up in a wooden chair in front of a podium. The set falls into place: Saihara's execution scene is situated in a quaint English mansion, with a shore and calm waters visible beyond its windows. The familiar execution music contains an element of old-timey jazz. Monokuma pops up, sitting in a tall chair behind Saihara. Monokuma is wearing a big powdered wig and red robes, like a judge!

Above shot: the floor is painted neatly with nine concentric squares. Saihara and Monokuma sit in the smallest, innermost square. The podium in front of Saihara contains a control panel with three knobs. There's a door in front of the podium, but it doesn't seem to have a doorknob.

The walls begin to creak ominously. Saihara swallows nervously, focusing on the control panel but taking quick peeks at the walls. Suddenly, the walls move inwards! They now cover the biggest square, leaving only eight squares in the room.

_AND THEN THERE WERE NONE_

_Ultimate Detective_

_Saihara Shuuichi's execution, executed_

Saihara hesitantly reaches forward and twists one of the knobs. The door shifts to the left, revealing a tiny opening that Saihara couldn't fit through even if he broke all his ribs! Saihara realizes that it must be a puzzle.

The walls move in again; the room shrinks again. There are seven squares now.

Saihara twists the knob again and the door slides back into his original position. He tests all the knobs individually, but can't figure out what they're supposed to do. They seem to move the door just a little bit in random directions.

The walls move in. There are six squares left.

Saihara realizes that if he doesn't solve this, he will be crushed by the walls. He tries some combinations with the knobs, managing to widen the gap between the door and the doorframe.

The walls move in. Five squares left. Monokuma yawns and fiddles with a miniature control panel, which somehow shifts the door back into its original position.

Saihara starts to panic. His movements become more frenzied, like he isn't trying to think through the puzzle anymore. The door moves in all sorts of directions, but never leaves a gap large enough for Saihara to fit through.

Four squares left. Monokuma appears frustrated with his control panel, jiggling the knobs furiously and making the door jitter all over the place.

Torrents of sweat pour down Saihara's face and neck. His face is contorted with anguish as he begins to twist the knobs at random.

Three left. Monokuma appears nervous too, mimicking Saihara's behavior with his mini-panel.

The door becomes a blur and so do Saihara's hands.

Two left. Monokuma continues to imitate Saihara.

All composure lost, Saihara bursts forwards, running straight for the door. He starts punching it, pulling it, and kicking it, anything that might break it, like a violent animal. It's completely undignified for a detective who's supposed to solve tough puzzles!

One square left. The room is tiny now. Monokuma is punching the mini-panel. Tears of desperation trickle down Saihara's face.

After a few good punches, a miracle happens! The door splinters and falls apart, allowing Saihara to leave! Saihara's panicked eyes light up with glorious relief!

What Saihara forgets, though, is that he's still wearing the collar and chain that yanked him in here from the trial room. When he leaps out through the door, a side shot shows that there's no ground for him to land on.

Saihara hangs himself.

Monokuma jumps down from his high seat and waddles over to where Saihara's corpse dangles. He shrugs at the body and presses a hidden button on his mini-panel, which causes a bridge from the tiny room back to the trial grounds to pop up in front of him.

Monokuma cheerfully walks away.

 

Someone is breathing heavy.

"I'm done," Kokichi says, right as Shuuichi blurts out a "Hold on, I need to go to the bathroom."

"The hell for?"

"I'll be ri—what?" Shuuichi's folded in half again, arms jumbled in front of his lap. "Sorry, what? I need to go, Kokichi. I've gotta go."

"You stay here."

"I've gotta go."

"You, Shuuichi. You keep your ass in that chair. You fucking stay here."

"I've gotta go."

"You stay. I can see your goddamn boner from here. Stay right where you are, happy dick." Kokichi pulls out his phone. "Stay. Stay."

Caught, Shuuichi stays.

Kokichi pokes the search bar, wondering what the hell he has gotten himself into, and with palsy-shivering fingers types:

H-O-W T-O S-U-C-K A D-I-C-K

 

The next day, Kokichi wakes up at two in the afternoon and has to haul ass to WallabyMart.

The day after that, he's up at noon.

Then he's up at ten again. At noon. At eleven. At seven, at five in the morning with a few stubborn stars still speckled across the blue-gray sky.

He's more tired than ever. The unborn report rots in his schoolwork folder. Wake up and jack off and piss and jack off and jack off. He wakes up at seven in the morning.

"Oh hey," says Aoyama, with yellow prarie-grass hair sticking up out of his head from sleep. "We weren't too loud the other night, were we?"

"Nah."

"That's good."

"Who's Watanabe?"

Aoyama's voice jumps up an octave. "Heh, I dunno!" He scoots out the door without eating breakfast. Terrible liar, that guy.

Amami Rantarou gains traction online. There are pictures online of Amami Rantarou in his underwear, in the shower, in bed with some featureless gray guy fucking his ass open. It's gross, it's wrong. It's used tissues.

Kokichi wakes up at four in the afternoon. To hell with WallabyMart.

 **_checkersq:_ ** _hey_

 **_checkersq:_ ** _wanna go somewhere today? go on a man-date or something?_

There are pictures online of Amami Rantarou with the playboy grin smashed off of his face by seven different cocks. They file into the R-18 section of Hope's Peak Danganronpa forums one by one behind the pictures of Amami Rantarou getting cut open and strangled and creampied by Barrancas in his merino wool jacket. Gross. Wrong. Used tissues.

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Why can't you just say date?..._

 **_checkersq:_ ** _i dunno. are we dating?_

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _We aren't?_

There are pictures online of Amami Rantarou in a pile of little girls with the same green hair he has. Naked. Naked, all of them. Gross. Wrong. Kokichi hasn't sunk that low yet.

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Hello?_

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Are you mad at me? Q_Q_

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _I'll go with you!_

Amami is about to take his shirt off, a salacious little crescent of perfect skin and the edge of a six-pack visible from the camera's angle. _What a man's man_ , Kokichi thinks, and catches a fistful of goo.

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Kokichiiiiiii_

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Aren't you supposed to be at work?_

 **_checkersq:_ ** _yeah_

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _o_0_

 **_checkersq:_ ** _no i didn't get fired_

Used tissues.

 **_checkersq:_ ** _anyway let's go check out the dr52 merch at dangan center_

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _I already preordered a bunch of that tho_

 **_checkersq:_ ** _come onnnnn wonder bread boy i'm asking you out! go for the experience! get some vitamin D!_

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _;)_

 **_checkersq:_ ** _oh fuck off_

 

Kokichi wears a button-up for Shuuichi. It smells like closet but it's clean and white with a blue pocket and blue sleeves. Blue is Shuuichi's color.

Shuuichi elevator-eyes him. "So, um..."

" _Hi,_ Shuuichi."

"Oh yes. S-sorry. Hi. Hey!" Shuuichi yelps, grabbing at his head as Kokichi snatches the ratty baseball cap adorning it right off.

"Ooh, this looks familiar! Doing a little cosplay in public already?" It's even got the star on the side.

"N-no. Give it back. _I need it_ ," Shuuichi whispers, with bulging eyes and an urgency that makes Kokichi grimace and toss the hat back to him. "Thanks." The bill of the hat blocks off one eye the way some guys with a bitter soul and no self-esteem rake black or green or neon blue bangs over half of their faces.

"Geez, what's your deal? You scared of snake people staring into your eyes and turning you to stone?" Kokichi starts them off with a trot, progressing casually down the cement sidewalk through crowds of people squinting against the sun, past signs leaning against frosted windows advertising in strawberry-milk lettering to change the shape of your eyelids, your nose, your lips.

"Kinda," Shuuichi says.

The street smells like hot asphalt and Chinese restaurant and dust. A poster pressed up against the inside of a display case chirps in creamsicle-orange: _Look like Junko Enoshima! Blepharoplasty and rhinoplasty walk-ins accepted! DIY workshops every Thursday!_

And then there's a row of jars of that weird skin-melty cream that everyone cool in high school used: _It's so natural, nobody can tell the difference. Shirogane Tsumugi-san's preferred molding formula!_

The next shop down sells mini-beams packaged in cutesy applicators the color of candies. _Model 5EL (engagement-learning) now available, 20-200 watts. Compact and effective. Ask your neurologist if it's the right fit for you._ The idea of having a neurologist makes Kokichi's head spin.

There's a spot up ahead where people like ants are milling around a small clearing, bottlenecked by something they don't want to touch. As he and Shuuichi draw closer, Kokichi makes out that it's a person. Closer. Closer still, and Kokichi spots the fattest ass he's ever seen attached to a balding man in cargo shorts lying sideways unmoving on a pile of squashed Roma tomatoes.

"It's raining men," Shuuichi giggles as they pass by.

The janitors arrive. They pick the guy up and haul him off, taking care not to spill more Roma tomatoes and chunky bits of soft matter onto the street. _What a shame_ , Kokichi laments. _What a fat ass._

 

"Oh!"

"What?"

Shuuichi scuttles over to the east end of the shop and points at sixteen racks up on the wall. "I didn't know these were already out!"

No. " _No_ ," Kokichi says, firmly. "Buying that shit in public is gross. You're not seriously thinking about it, are you?"

"Well—Well what's so wrong about it?" Shuuichi pinches at the hem of Umi-chan's pink thong. "It's just underwear. Are you saying you _wouldn't_ wear Amami-kun's briefs?"

"Wha—Of course I wouldn't! Man, I knew you were a rabid pervert, but you could at least hide it when we're out and about." There are at least eight crumpled tissues in Kokichi's wastebasket back in his crummy apartment bedroom laughing at him right now.

"We're alo—"

"Hello! Can I help you two gentlemen?" They're not alone. Some girl in a Dangan Center tee with a plastic name badge is standing between them now, blinking her eyes that have been melted and squeezed and folded until they're Bambi-wide, hands behind her back.

"O-Oh, er..." Shuuichi stutters. He tugs at the brim of his hat until the bill shades both eyes from her piercing, courteous, let-me-service-you gaze. "A-Actually, if you would be so kind, I was looking for, uh..."

"Yes?"

Shuuichi braves a glance. His breaths start to come a little too light; he smiles a shaky, polite smile at her. "Sorry, do you happen to know where the keychains are?" And he says it with no drool running down his chin, no flecks of white foam dotting his lips, and no strange fidgeting. For one supernatural moment, Shuuichi is normal.

_What? That's all it takes for you to act like a dignified human being? A girl?_

Bambi-eyes smiles and makes a motion with her hand as she prepares to answer.

_I hate the way you look at her._

"Wait," Kokichi pipes up, several pitches higher than normal. _Shuuichi wants to be fake? Fine. I'm just as fake._ "Nii-san, weren't you going to buy Umi's panties?"

"H-huh?" Shuuichi's face crumples. Sick joy wells up inside of Kokichi.

"You sniffed Reika's panties so much they got holes in them," he continues, matter-of-factly, scuffing the floor with a shoe. "Why do you sniff panties, nii-san? Don't they go on butts?"

Bambi laughs like she's stuck at a dinner party between her two least favorite aunts. She elevator-eyes Shuuichi. "The keychains are that way, sir," she says, and retreats to her post at the opposite end of the store.

_Without Shuuichi, today is tomorrow is yesterday and on and on and on but I've done it before and I can do it again. I can do it again and again and again._

"What was that for?" Shuuichi whisper-shouts once she's out of sight. His voice burns with betrayal.

_I'm a damn hypocrite._

"Hey, Shuuichi, buddy..." An overcompensating leer stretches across Kokichi's face. If he stops smiling now he'll look like he knows he's done wrong and that won't fly. That'll leave a big fat bruise in his ego and why would he let that happen when he can leave the bruise in Shuuichi's ego instead. "If you're going to lie, at least make it interesting." The smile is too wide, too wide for his face and his cheeks feel like a muscle cramp.

_So what if all I have is Shuuichi. I don't need Shuuichi. I don't need anyone._

_I can rot in peace by myself._

When they leave Dangan Center, the janitors are mopping up a huge patch of Roma tomato in the shape of a giant fetus.

 

Shuuichi is sore like he was that first Friday. Doesn't text Kokichi. That's okay. Kokichi scans barcodes until he's numb.

But then—

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _Come over after work._

 **_DRFanShuu:_ ** _I have something special for you~_

Kokichi doesn't like the tilde. Doesn't. There's something cold about it that makes him wonder if the homicide rate is as infinitesimally low as the officials say it is. He bikes to Shuuichi's house and doesn't like the clipped smile Shuuichi gives him or the way they hold hands up the stairs like Kokichi's supposed to run away.

Shuuichi is still cold when they sit down on his bed side by side.

Shuuichi smiles a refrigerated smile and says, "I wrote an execution for you, Kokichi."


End file.
